Geeky license plate gallery

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Wired's Robert McMillan has collected some of the geekiest license plates he can find for a fun little gallery. I've only ever owned a car once, the year I lived in LA, and I was happy to score COPYFYT for my crappy Hyundai (my wife, a gamer, got MAGELFG, only after being turned down for ZOMGWTF). Of course, attentive Boingers will know that our own Jason Weisberger sports the ultimate custom plate: DRUNK.

Kirby Ferguson, who created the remarkable Everything is a Remix series, has a new podcast hosted by the Recreate Coalition called Copy This and he hosted me on the debut episode (MP3) where we talked about copying, creativity, artists, and the future of the internet (as you might expect!).

The Data & Society institute (dedicated to critical, interdisciplinary perspectives on big data) held an online seminar devoted to Cathy O’Neil’s groundbreaking book Weapons of Math Destruction, which showed how badly designed algorithmic decision-making systems can create, magnify and entrench the social problems they’re supposed to solve, perpetuating inequality, destabilizing the economy, and making a […]

The Boing Boing Store’s Gift Guide is full of ideas for pretty much anyone in your life like hipster ice cub trays, Xbox controllers, Halo Boards, and even diamond necklaces. As always, all products in the Boing Boing Store come at great discounts, too. Shop by price bucket starting at under $20. Under $20:Bloxx Jumbo Ice Trays […]

Unlike traditional lighters, the SaberLight features an electronic plasma beam that’s both rechargeable and butane-free. This sleek lighter is even approved by TSA, so you’ll never be stuck buying lighters you’ll just have to throw away partially used. For some people, like me, this is a pretty big game-changer. The SaberLight’s beam is actually both hotter and cleaner […]

Holiday shopping is in full swing, and the Striiv Touch is one of the best gift ideas I’ve landed on. Its simple design works for females and males, and its wide range of features makes it suitable for even the non-fitness enthusiasts in your life.Unlike traditional fitness trackers, the Striiv Touch also acts as a smartwatch. It […]

Did you know that all it takes is an anonymous phone call to get a vanity plate yanked ? I used to have plates that read “RU ASI9”, and after a few months the Secretary of State called me to tell me that “somebody” had called and was “offended” by my plates (Dumb shit probably thought they said “Your Ass Is Mine” or something else Kramerian) and the SoS was pulling them. Didn’t cost me a dime to get new ones, so I chose “CENSRD 1”.

I tried complaining, pointing out that the plate was not vulgar or profane, that it was simply a question being asked. SoS wouldn’t budge. I drew up a petition and got over 50 names stating that they weren’t offended by it. The SoS drone still told me that none of that mattered, and all it would take to lose “CENSRD 1” would be another lone, sneaky chickenshit anonymous phone call, as anonymous as the oath of the confessional.

I asked if it worked that way for everybody, and he said it did. I asked “You mean that if I see a plate that says, oh, “I PRY DO U” or “I LV GOD”, I can call up the secretary of state’s office, not give my name or anything, just whine that the plate offended me, and it would be yanked ?”

“Yes. That’s all it would take.”

“ANY plate in the state of Illinois ?”

“Yes.”

I stared at him for a second. “Are you trying to give me some sort of idea, chief ?”

“I would not presume, sir.”

I tested it a few weeks later, on a jagoff who kept using two of my apartment building’s parking spaces at a time. Presto, it worked. Tried it on the ratfuck who I think dropped dime on me. Zap, Gone.

“Six or seven-letter words like liquor or whiskey probably wouldn’t make it through the state screening process before the plates are issued. But merlot did and Eurick was fine until an anonymous caller told the state that merlot was also an alcoholic beverage.”

Perhaps you should start a champaign of reporting every single vanity plate you see. Or get a list and just call them all. If everyone finds this a problem then they might be more willing to change it. Here I think they can only refuse to issue it again, they can’t recall it. (I could be wrong on that.)

Maybe YOU should be hunting down the tattletales and puritans who don’t have anything better to do than to take up various driver’s services clerks valuable time, pissing and moaning over taxpaying citizens who were having some harmless fun on their own dime –

Because you sound just like one of them. I think that would be right up your alley, so to speak. You should be amongst your own people.

Cool yer jets there snagglepuss – I’m on your side… I think. Wasn’t it you who complained that your plate was yanked because of a single complainant who prolly didn’t understand the plate in the first place?

I too feel this is the wrong way to handle (potentially) offending vanity plates.

My thinking – wrong though it may be, as you so kindly* point out – is to protest these failings of the bureaucratic system by working within the self same system by turning it against itself. If you and I and others, (and I don’t think it would actually take too many people) complained about every vanity plate we saw, it wouldn’t take long before the process would be changed. Hopefully for the better.

But, seriously. I don’t think that your plan would work, because any bureaucracy so willing to censor would most likely just get rid of the program altogether, rather than overhaul it. They don’t make THAT much money off of vanity plates, and they REALLY don’t need bluenoses raising a public stink about “taxpayer dollars being used to spread filth”. Two birds, one stone would be the way they saw it.

Rewriting a directive wouldn’t solve this anyway, because the SoS / Driver’s Services isn’t the problem – It’s sidewalk supervisors and wet blankets everywhere, and a “questionable” license plate is just one more battleground in the age-old struggle between censorous old biddies and people who have, you know, a sense of humor or a life. I’m SO not recommending a retaliatory campaign to ban every faith-based license plate out there in the name of “fighting censorship”, because the irony would be too much to bear. I simply mentioned a possible method of hitting back against any particular petty moralist stupid enough to take action against somebodys’ making a joke which they neither get nor approve – But only as long as you can be sure that you’re hitting back against the right person. Tit for tat, and all that.

Those are long odds, I know – Your typical tattletale is a sneaky backstabber, not the type to strut up to you and boast “I’M the guy who got rid of your dirty license plate, praise Jesus !” But if the opportunity presents itself….Shoving a prude into the same bureacratic gears that they used on you MIGHT teach them a lesson, but Who Cares if it doesn’t ? They’re all cowards anyway, and sometimes you gotta take what little happiness you can find…

I can’t think of any good connection. The one that comes to mind is that the Linus Torvalds (Finnish) wrote the first Linux kernel at school in Sweden, and Volvo is a Swedish car maker.
Please forgive the stretch, it’s almost certainly not what gadgetgirl was thinking, and I’m pretty dense myself.

Years ago as a newb I accidentially stumbled on a tricky variant of rm -rf * . I wanted to remove a bunch of dot files so I typed rm -rf .* The problem with this is that “.*” includes “..”, so the rm went right up to the root. Doh!

My Zombie Assault SUV (complete with all appropriate decals and zombie hunting permits), has plate BRAINZ. Frankly, even I think the zombie thing is well-past done at this point, but my vehicle still amuses me.

Oh, there is a story! And it involves the head gasket blowing up in front of a cop on the day Obama came to town. Too long to recount the whole tale here, but the cop did correctly diagnose the problem (thankfully, he realized it wasn’t a car bomb gone awry) and almost bit when libelle asked the cop if he wanted to buy it. RIP, widdo blue Boxster.

The demise was probably a lot more boring than you’d like to read (tl;dr – those plates are now on a Subaru).

The coolant system on that car was never very robust, and needed expensive repairs ever year or two. In its last year, there was a problem with coolant leaks in the engine block itself. The repair guys would claim that they pressure tested everything, and that it was not a gasket leak. I took it to several repair places including the dealer with no luck. I decided it was time to sell it.

I had it at the dealer for one last attempt to get the issue resolved. It turned out that this was the very day president Obama was visiting West LA, and as I was driving the home from the dealer, I noticed a high density of police along the route.

As I passed through a busy intersection, I heard the “whoosh” of something along the lines of an angel’s soul leaving its corporeal body. In the rear-view, I saw a sudden billowing of black and white smoke and steam. I also saw, from the corner of my eye, several bored cops suddenly become alert and focused.
By the time I made it to the curb, there were several officers vectoring in.

“You just blew your head gasket, son,” said one. “But you need to get this fancy car out of here before the President comes through.”
“If you want it, I’ll make you a deal on it,” was the best I could reply.
Surprisingly, he briefly seemed to consider buying it. But then he did the repair cost math, factored in what his wife would say, and told me that he’d radio AAA to tow it back to my house instead.

In the end, I sold its remnants to an enterprising young man who was going to learn to rebuild the engine as part of an apprenticeship to his friend who ran a repair shop.

Excellent prosaic detail intermixed with solid first hand observation. Tie in with the current phase of election cycle is a good addition. The supporting letter from a significant other, a spouse without any apparent grudge against this vehicle, is a dangerous gambit but I think it pays off. Dumping a car due to simple coolant reformatting seems harsh. But overall, I’m inclined to consider your claim valid.

In keeping with the campaign theme, I’d be happy to post (redacted) copies of my birth certificate, marriage certificate (which confirms 3ringquercus’s assertions), and all of the repair receipts to any interested media representatives :)

Back in the 90s I saw a car driving down 580 in Dublin CA with plates “DOGBERT1”, presumably belonging to Scott Adams. I had recently moved to California, and it was a nice change from the more typical vanity plates like “BMW4ME” that were common at the time.

Of course, if you want geeky license plates, there’s the New Hampshire “UNIX” plate that belonged to Armando Stettner back in the day.

OT since it wasn’t actually a license plate, but was redolent with geekery: driving down Foothill Boulevard in La Canada, a mile or so from JPL, I saw a reddish Volvo with this bumper sticker: “If this car looks blue, you’re driving too fast.”

I can’t find the picture I took of the FUNNY+5 plate on an SUV in a Bay area locals sekrit climbing spot. Turns out it’s also impossible to google – for the level of google-fu I was willing to devote to it, anyway.